CMB ends regular season with road loss

JEWELL — Collins-Maxwell/Baxter’s volleyball team ended its season on a bit of a sour note Thursday night. CMB fell at South Hamilton in straight sets 25-17, 25-11, 25-22.

The Raiders started off strongly with plenty of energy, according to coach Scott Ranck. CMB was moving and playing well until a few mistakes allowed SH to pull away in the first set.

“That carried over into the second set as we never really recovered from that,” Ranck said. “The second set we were not moving, didn’t have good passes, nor have good hits.”

Down 8-2 in the third set, Ranck called a timeout. After a side out, CMB scored the next nine points to take a 12-8 lead.

Momentum swung to South Hamilton from there, though. CMB missed four of its next five serves, and even though the Raiders fought, they fell 25-22.

“We kind of feel that if we hadn’t lost that momentum, we would have won that third set, and who knows what would have happened after that,” Ranck said. “Overall, I was fairly pleased with the performance as some things we hadn’t been doing lately in our matches started to show up again, and that is always a confidence booster heading into tournaments.”

Abbie Haupert and Katie Ziesman tied for the team lead with five kills apiece. Alex Hiavacek had three kills. Payge Jurgens and Abbey Applegate had two apiece. Mackenzie Schmitz and Toni Spencer each recorded one kill. Schmitz assisted on 12 sets to lead the Raiders, followed by Applegate’s two. Haupert had two solo blocks. Jurgens went 8-for-8 on servces with three aces. Hannah McWhirter was 5-for-7 serving with two aces. Ziesman was 7-for-8 with two ace serves.